Films & Schedules
- Narrative Feature

ABOUT ELLY

DIRECTOR: Asghar Farhadi - IRAN

A taut, involving drama centered around the mysterious disappearance of a young woman.

Ahmad, divorced from his German wife, has recently returned to Tehran. Looking forward to joining a group of old university friends for a weekend getaway on the Caspian Sea, he reflects that perhaps it is time to find an Iranian wife. One of the group, Sepided, has invited someone new, an attractive teacher named Elly, who she thinks just might be a match for Ahmad. But as the lighthearted gathering settles in, Elly mysteriously disappears from their seaside bungalow. As lies and deception compound into catastrophe, About Elly focuses on the behavior and values of the Iranian middle class, illustrating how convention, conformity, and tradition can be restrictive, even among those who fool themselves into thinking they are not guided by them.

Filmography: Beautiful City (04), Fireworks Wednesday (06).

Winner of the Best Narrative Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival and this year’s Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

AJAMI

DIRECTOR: Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani - ISRAEL

A powerful crime drama set in Jaffa’s multi-ethnic Ajami neighborhood, a melting pot of cultures and conflicting views among Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Winner of the Best Film, Director, and Screenplay awards at this year’s Israeli Film Academy ceremony, this powerful collaboration between Shani (Israeli) and Copti (Palestinian) offers a unique perspective on the myriad complexities of the greater Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ajami is a tough Jaffa neighborhood, rife with tension. In this multi-ethnic stew, a powerful Bedouin clan wages a violent vendetta against a poor family that has offended its honor. A teenage worker from the occupied territories desperately tries to raise money to help his ailing mother. A Jewish police detective struggles with the disappearance of his brother. An affluent Palestinian and his Jewish girlfriend dream about the future. As these gripping stories intersect, we witness the dramatic collisions in a world of sustained, machismo-fueled chaos.

First Feature Film.

This year’s Israeli submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest.

BAD DAY TO GO FISHING

DIRECTOR: Alvaro Brechner - URUGUAY

This quirky tale pits a scamming hustler and his wrestler sidekick against the inhabitants of a small Uruguayan town.

A combination of quirky dark drama and deadpan satire plays out in this stylish tale of a washed-up wrestler and a smooth conman in a sleepy village in South America. “Prince” Orsini, an impresario, arrives in a small town with his protégé, a one-time German wrestling champion named Jacob Van Oppen. Orsini’s scheme is to use Jacob’s status to lure locals into duels with him, promising a large cash sum to anybody who can pin him in three minutes. In reality, the matches are fixed to protect Jacob’s reputation—and Orsini’s income. The pair’s plan is threatened when an opponent is too drunk to wrestle, and femme fatale Adriana, eying the non-existent $1,000 prize, offers up her muscular husband as the replacement opponent. Jacob, nursing sore muscles, a nasty cough, and an even nastier alcohol habit, is in trouble. “Brechner’s ambitious debut is something like a retro The Wrestler by way of the Coen brothers.”—Variety.

First Feature Film.

This year’s Uruguayan submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

BLUEBEARD

DIRECTOR: Catherine Breillat - FRANCE

In this retelling of the tale of the wife-killing Bluebeard, Breillat reminds us all that the best fairytales are dark around the edges. The film intercuts between the stories of two pairs of sisters. The first is set in the 1950s and features a young girl who loves torturing her older sister with dramatic readings of the story of Bluebeard. In the second, set during the Renaissance, a young girl becomes engaged to Lord Bluebeard, despite the suspicious disappearances of his previous wives.

Following the death of their father, Anne and Marie-Catherine are cast from boarding school and sent back to their mother. With no money for dowry, younger sister Marie-Catherine agrees to wed the wealthy but notorious aristocrat Lord Bluebeard, whose previous wives have all suspiciously disappeared. Will Marie-Catherine be next? Both surprisingly straightforward and slyly subversive, Breillat’s telling of Charles Perrault’s lurid 18th-century fable teases out the class and gender conflicts present in the original, reminding us that the best fairy tales are tinged with perverse darkness. Using parallel storylines, Breillat intercuts the fairy tale itself with childhood scenes set in a safe, bourgeois home in the 1950s, where a young girl frightens her older sister, and herself, with repeated readings of the titillating Freudian tale.

CHAMELEON

DIRECTOR: Krisztina Goda - HUNGARY

A suspenseful psychological thriller, Chameleon centers on a clever con man who targets lonely, disillusioned women, playing on their romantic fantasies. But can the con man be conned if love gets in the way?

Gábor cleans offices. Working nights, he rarely has any contact with his employers, yet he learns everything about them by thoroughly analyzing their garbage. Nobody suspects that Gábor is in fact a con man who carefully chooses his victims by the trash they leave behind, and usually targets disillusioned, lonely women. In a few months he destroys all their romantic illusions by taking all of their savings. When he gets a job at a psychologist’s office, Gábor meets Hanna, an injured dancer from a wealthy family. Insecure and vulnerable, Hanna seems to be the perfect victim. Gábor pretends to be a doctor who can cure her body and her soul. Everything goes according to plan until Gábor falls in love, and must choose between his beloved and her money. A suspenseful psychological thriller, Chameleon is this year’s Hungarian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH

DIRECTOR: Lu Chuan - CHINA

“The Rape of Nanking” by Japanese soldiers remains one of China's darkest historical chapters. This luminous black-and-white film uses several small stories to illustrate the bigger picture: man's incredible inhumanity to man.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese army during its occupation of Nanking in December 1937—more than 300,000 were massacred, sexual assault was pandemic, and the city was virtually decimated—remain some of the most harrowing chapters of war in the 20th century. Lu Chuan’s vivid recreation of the “Rape of Nanking” tells the story of a small group of Westerners and Chinese engaged in anguished negotiations with the Japanese to limit the suffering of the civilian population. A series of key vignettes—a young Chinese soldier leads a doomed resistance group; a confused and anguished Japanese private is overwhelmed by the insanity; John Rabe, a German businessman, establishes a safety zone in an attempt to protect the lives of countless Chinese; and the harried secretary of a Nazi official betrays his charges to try and save his family—told with Lu’s burning, black-and-white images, bespeak man’s amazing inhumanity to man.

COOKING HISTORY

DIRECTOR: Péter Kerekes - CZECH REPUBLIC

This riveting, unusual documentary takes a tour of 20th century battlefields through the eyes of those who kept the soldiers fed and fighting: military cooks.

This riveting film opens the door to the secrets of little-known historians to show a dimension of war not found in textbooks or archives. Cooking History presents portraits of various army military cooks from all over Europe who have witnessed the European wars of the 20th century. Their recollections tap into a subjective view of historical events, one that diverges in some respects from conventional beliefs. They take us on a journey through pivotal dates, facts, declarations of war, battles, and peace agreements. The tales they tell convey a sense of life and death in the “war apparatus,” as well as a sense of hope, longing, and survival in the midst of destruction and despair. Kerekes’ look behind “great moments in time” introduces a fresh perspective on European history.

Filmography: About Three Days in Monastary Jasov (94), The Mary-Valery Bridge (00), 66 Seasons (03).

DAWSON ISLA 10

DIRECTOR: Miguel Littin - CHILE

Dawson, Isla 10 focuses on the imprisonment of advisors close to the deposed socialist government of president Salvador Allende. The men were jailed and endured hellish conditions on the island, the world's southernmost concentration camp, for more than a year.

After the military coup in 1973, deposed President Salvador Allende’s closest collaborators and ministers were locked up in a concentration camp on Dawson Island, lying at the western entrance to the Strait of Magellan. They are assigned numbers instead of names. Their lives are spared thanks to pressure from the International Red Cross, but they are not spared from torture and forced labor. Thirty years later, some survivors return to the island and rediscover the place where they learned to survive in such extreme conditions. Miguel Littin, who spent many years living in exile and to whom writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez dedicated his book “Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin,” took inspiration for his drama from the autobiography by Sergio Bitar, one of Allende’s ministers.

Filmography: The Promised Land (71), Letter From Marusia (76), Alsino and the Condor (82), The Shipwreck (94), The Last Man (05).

This year’s Chilean submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

DOWN TERRACE

DIRECTOR: Ben Wheatley - GREAT BRITAIN

Father and son gangsters freshly released from prison must keep their criminal enterprise afloat while trying to figure out who ratted them out. Was it Bill's wife or their despised family "friend"? Anyone is a suspect in this blackly comic piece of criminal realism.

Ken Loach meets “The Sopranos” might characterize this darkly comic and sometimes disturbing slice of social surrealism in which a family of dysfunctional crooks tries to keep their criminal enterprise from falling apart. As soon as Bill (Bob Hill) and his son Karl (Rob Hill) are released from jail, they try to figure out who ratted them out to the police. Bill’s partner (Julia Deakin) seems like your average housewife, but there’s something about her that suggests she may have had a hand in it. It soon becomes evident that this ordinary terraced house is packed to the rafters with gangsters. Among others, we meet a despised family “friend” (Tony Way), a hit man (Michael Smiley) who takes his toddler along on jobs, Karl’s pregnant girlfriend (Kali Peacock), and a nasty piece of work named Eric (David Schaal). Paranoia reigns supreme in this house, where everyone is suspicious of everyone else.

EVERYONE ELSE

DIRECTOR: Maren Ade - GERMANY

Chris and Gitti are a happy couple on the surface, but when they meet a happier, more successful couple on vacation, their fragile relationship starts to fall apart.

On the surface, architect Chris and his girlfriend Gitti seem to enjoy perfect, amorous bliss during a getaway on their Sardinia vacation. But their playful romps, secret rituals, and silly habits hide an underlying tension. The two are actually polar opposites. Full of verve, the idiosyncratic Gitti is fearless in expressing her love and devotion for Chris, while he is more reserved in his outlook on life and crippled by varying degrees of personal and professional insecurity. When this odd couple casually meets a happier and more successful couple, everything starts to fall apart. Taking a leaf out of the other couple’s book, Chris tries to show his willful girlfriend who’s boss (he thinks it’s him). Gitti attempts to conform to his new ideal, but what begins as a playful experiment soon turns into a quiet struggle with her own personality. Thanks to their newly developed personas, Chris and Gitti get a second chance to be as happy as everyone else.

FISH TANK

DIRECTOR: Andrea Arnold - GREAT BRITAIN

Fish Tank is the story of an alienated Essex teenager whose life becomes even more complicated when her mom brings home a new boyfriend.

Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize for her first film, Red Road (PIFF 31), Arnold has won it again for her second, Fish Tank. Mia (Kate Jarvis), a sullen and volatile 15-year-old, lives with her single mother and little sister in a dreary working-class housing project in Essex. Ostracized at school and angry at the world, Mia’s only solace is her private passion for hip-hop dancing, which she practices incessantly. When her mother (Kierston Wareing) brings home a mysterious, charming stranger named Connor (Michael Fassbender, Hunger), who just might be the calming father figure the family needs, an emotional, if not sexual, chemistry between he and Mia soon adds a new dimension to a charged family atmosphere. One of Britain’s strongest new cinematic voices, Arnold reaffirms her talent for gripping, emotionally-charged realism, and for finding beautiful poetry in the bleakest of lives.

FOREVER ENTHRALLED

DIRECTOR: Chen Kaige - CHINA

The life and career of opera star Mei Lenfeng is the subject of Chen Kaige's opulent period drama which traces Mei from childhood through his career-threatening refusal to perform during the occupation.

Chen Kaige’s opulent period drama tells the story of Mei Lanfang (1894–1961), a Peking opera singer of such virtuosity that his fame spread worldwide and his admirers included Charlie Chaplin and Sergei Eisenstein, who filmed him. Descended from an acting family, Mei was so popular he soon became a rival to veteran actor Swallow 13, and the two faced off in a musical “duel” from which Mei emerged the victor. His fame spread and in the late 1920s he even performed on Broadway. But when disaster struck with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Mei’s refusal to sing in public under the occupation proved career threatening. Neatly conveying the fragile social position of opera performers of the early part of the last century, when they were regarded as little better than prostitutes, Chen offers an engaging portrait of Mei’s amazing talent.

GIGANTE

DIRECTOR: Adrián Biniez - URUGUAY

The story of a supermarket security guard's obsession with a late-shift janitor.

Jara (Horacio Camandule) spends his nights as a security guard on the graveyard shift at a Montevideo supermarket in stoic silence—eating pastries, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the confines of his world go by on a bank of TV monitors. Something stirs in Jara, though, when he catches sight of a cleaning woman (Leonor Svarcas) in the fluorescent glare of the empty supermarket floor. Too shy to speak, he begins following the woman after work, decoding her secrets while continuing to deny his own. Will the gentle giant ever summon the courage to approach her? Set against the dreary background of economic recession and distinguished by Camandule’s heart-wrenching performance, this nearly silent one-way love story—which the director himself considers “a subversion of the classic … romantic comedy”—earned three awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear and the Best Debut Film Prizes.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

DIRECTOR: André Téchiné - FRANCE

The Girl On The Train tells the true story of a young woman who claimed to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack on a Paris suburban train.

A young woman, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), reports that skinheads attacked her, seemingly for being a Jew. The incident becomes a media sensation and attorney Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), an old friend of Jeanne’s mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve), takes the case. The incident and its aftermath, drawn from real events, formed the core of Jean-Marie Besset’s play on which the film is based, but for Téchiné, the dramatic entanglements provide an opportunity to explore the complex family and social relationships that surround and define his characters. Notions of class, ethnicity, and who’s in and who’s out in contemporary France course through the film, offering a provocative reflection on the creation of identity at a time of ever-increasing social tension.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

DIRECTOR: Niels Arden Oplev - SWEDEN

Based on the best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the tale of a disgraced journalist trying to crack a 40-year-old murder that may have been the work of a still-at-large serial killer.

An international crime thriller involving corporate intrigue, serial murder, and powerful Old World dynasties, Oplev’s taut film is based on the international best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson and will have you on the edge of your seat. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a disgraced reporter about to go to prison. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is the mysterious girl of the title with a checkered past and a sideline in computer hacking. Together they are hired to investigate a 40-year-old disappearance at the request of eccentric, 82-year-old industralist Henrik Vanger. As they dig deep into the secrets of the Vanger family they begin to uncover a dark and bloody history that someone wants to keep hidden at any cost.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD

DIRECTOR: Kim Ji-woon - SOUTH KOREA

Set in the 1930s Manchurian desert, three Korean men—a bounty hunter, a gang leader, and a train robber—meet aboard a train and engage in a chase across Manchuria to take possession of a mysterious map.

“One might call director Kim Ji-woon’s stunning homage to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone a kimchi Western. The film boasts masterful high-speed action like you’ve never seen before: think Stagecoach meets high-wire Jackie Chan meets The Road Warrior. Tongue firmly in cheek, this action-comedy is set on the Japanese-occupied Manchurian steppe in the 1930s as a bizarre trio of Korean exiles—The Good (a sharp-shooting bounty hunter in a duster), The Bad (a wickedly handsome knife-throwing gang leader) and The Weird (a two-fisted gun-slinging thief)—get their hands on a treasure map and then set off in hot pursuit of buried Qing dynasty loot. Kim’s exhilarating, escalating mayhem pits our three antiheroes against fast-moving trains, horses, trucks, motorcycles, Jeeps, explosions, Japanese and Chinese soldiers, and Russian bandits. And, after all that, their final, existential showdown does not disappoint.”—AFI Fest.

Selected Filmography: A Tale of Two Sisters (03), Bittersweet Life (05).

HEIRAN

DIRECTOR: Shalizeh Arefpoor - IRAN

Heiran and Mahi are in love. He is Afghan, she is Iranian. Her father forbids her to see him, and thus begins a tale of love and prejudice, a modern-day, Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet.

During the post-Soviet period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, almost three million Afghans fled across the border into Iran, triggering prejudice and strife among their hosts. Heiran is one such refugee. Mahi, a successful 17-year-old student from a poor family herself, falls in love with Heiran. Her father, however, flies into a violent rage when he learns of their relationship and forbids Mahi to see Heiran. And that is only the beginning of the couple’s problems. When they flee to Tehran together, their hard-won bliss is soon threatened again. Heiran is a timeless tale of star-crossed lovers thrown into turmoil by family differences and cultural circumstances—a modern-day, Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet.

HELIOPOLIS

DIRECTOR: Ahmad Abdalla - EGYPT

Heliopolis follows the lives and frustrations of a host of characters living in Cairo's historic Heliopolis district.

This ensemble drama’s sharp critique of Egyptian society is matched by a nostalgia-drenched longing for life before the 1952 revolution. Using intertwining stories, Abdalla skillfully sheds light on the small struggles of everyday life in Cairo, and on the discontent that seems to pervade one particular district of the city. Criss-crossing Cairo’s historical Heliopolis neighborhood, we share the minor travails of various players over the course of a single day. Hany wants to procure a visa to travel abroad. Ali and Maha want to buy Hany’s apartment but must first negotiate gridlock. Grad student Ibrahim wants to interview an uncooperative subject. Hotel clerk Engy simply wants to be anywhere but Egypt. As they each fail to achieve their meager goals, Abdalla suggests that their individual frustrations stem from an underlying discontent endemic in Egyptian society.

HIPSTERS

DIRECTOR: Valery Todorovsky - RUSSIA

Valery Todorovsky's period-set musical Hipsters centers around a group of splashy young rebels living in Moscow in the 1950s.

Moscow, 1955. In the midst of strict Cold War Soviet conformity, nothing can stop a group of young “hipsters” from donning outrageous threads, adopting American nicknames, puffing up their pompadours, throwing back martinis, and reveling in forbidden jazz. Straight-laced 20-year-old Communist Youth Party member Mels finds these brazen renegades shocking until he falls under the spell of a pretty one and joins the new revolution. Soon he’s cavorting in the latest flashy fashions, sporting an enormous do, and wailing on the saxophone—all in an exuberant musical that delves into a chapter of Russian history little known to outsiders. Music and the common dream of America become a manifestation of freedom. The winner of four Nika Awards (Russia’s Oscar) including Best Film, Hipsters is universal in its celebration of self-expression and spirited opposition to conformity.

Filmography: Love (92), The Land of the Deaf (98), The Lover (02), My Stepbrother Frankenstein (04).

HOME

DIRECTOR: Ursula Meier - SWITZERLAND

Marthe and Michel live with their kids on the edge of a near-completed freeway. When the road is suddenly opened up to traffic, the noise and pollution threatens to destroy the family unit. Ursula Meier's absurd comedy—a "road movie in reverse"—brilliantly redefines the meaning of home.

With just the right touches of farce and drama, Home is what Meier has termed “a road movie in reverse.” An ordinary middle class family lives an ordinary life in their ordinary house that sits next to an unused highway. With no neighbors or cars for miles, they live a typical day-to-day existence. Michel (Olivier Gourmet) goes to work by getting into his car on the other side of the empty stretch of road that seems to lead nowhere. Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) maintains a calm household while her teenage daughter listens to music and suns herself next to the guardrails. Life is good—or at least average. But when the highway is suddenly opened and cars whizzing by become the norm, the family’s dynamic changes: dad’s stressed, mom’s freaking out, and things spiral out of control. Ultimately, the family needs to redefine what “home” means.

JOHN RABE

DIRECTOR: Florian Gallenberger - GERMANY

A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.

Ulrich Tukur (The Lives of Others) gives a gripping performance as John Rabe, a German industrialist in China who, in 1937, intervened to save an estimated 200,000 Chinese civilians from the rape and slaughter perpetrated by the invading Japanese army. Reluctantly drawn into the relief effort by a coalition of fellow internationals, including an American doctor (Steve Buscemi) and a French school headmistress (Anne Consigny), Rabe and company create a safety zone at Rabe’s Siemens plant where refugees fleeing the Nanking massacre can take shelter. But mounting pressure from the aggressive Japanese commanding officer (Teruyuki Kagawa) pushes their resolve to the breaking point. Based on Rabe’s diaries (published as “The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe”), Gallenberger’s film is the winner of four German Film Awards including Best Film and Best Actor.

THE LETTER FOR THE KING

DIRECTOR: Pieter Verhoeff - NETHERLANDS

The Letter for the King follows the medieval quest of sixteen-year old Tiuri, who risks his future as a knight to fulfill a promise, and in so doing discovers adventure, honor, valor, and love.

Based on the story by Tonke Dragt, The Letter for the King brings one of the most popular young-adult books in Dutch history vividly to life in this knights-on-horseback adventure. Sixteen-year-old Tiuri sets out on a dangerous journey marked by sword-clanging battles and unexpected help from a beautiful princess. On the eve of becoming a knight, he must sacrifice his own dreams when he promises a dying messenger that he will deliver an extremely important letter to the King. Join Tuiri on his perilous, life-changing journey through mountain, forest, and valley where not only lives but also kingdoms hang in the balance.

LETTERS TO FATHER JACOB

DIRECTOR: Klaus Härö - FINLAND

When Leila is pardoned after serving 12 years of a life sentence, she agrees to work as an assistant to Father Jacob, answering the letters of those who write asking for his help. Although she regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, the letters ultimately play a role in her redemption.

A simple but transcendent story about faith and human frailty, Letters to Father Jacob achieves a state of grace. Surprised when she is pardoned 12 years into a life sentence, hard-bitten killer Leila (Kaarina Hazard) takes the prison warden’s suggestion and winds up at the ramshackle rural parsonage of Father Jacob. The blind elderly man needs an assistant to pursue his main joy in life: answering the letters of those who write to ask for his help. Although Leila regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, it ultimately plays a role in her own redemption and heart-rending self-forgiveness.

Filmography: As If I Didn’t Exist (02), Mother of Mine (05), The New Man (07).

This year’s Finnish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL

DIRECTOR: Hong Sang-soo - SOUTH KOREA

Hong Sang-soo's latest wry, comic bulletin from the sex-war centers on a middle-aged man who encounters two married women—and has two very different experiences.

Celebrated art film director Ku Kyung-Nam, invited to a small Korean film festival, runs into old colleague Bu. Invited to dinner, Ku gets drunk, carries on with Bu’s wife, and enrages his friend. A couple of weeks later, Ku meets one of his ex-students, now a famous artist who is surprisingly married to a woman Ku once dated and rejected—a small fact unrevealed to his former student. Ku’s two very different encounters with two very different married women provide a wry, wincing examination of sexual confusion as the oblivious Ku propels himself from one embarrassing situation to another. In true Woody Allen fashion, Sang-soo’s alter-ego offers a comedic take on the pretensions of the world of indy film and filmmakers while deconstructing the paradoxes, ironies, and existential angst of male vanity and insecurity.

Selected Filmography: The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (96), Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (00), Woman Is the Future of Man (04), Woman on the Beach (06).

LOOKING FOR ERIC

DIRECTOR: Ken Loach - GREAT BRITAIN

Loach makes an unexpected leap into romantic comedy in this tale of a lovelorn mailman who receives some unexpected life coaching from Manchester United star Eric Cardona.

Loach and longtime screenwriter/collaborator Paul Laverty shift from their more despondent social-realist meditations to this fanciful romantic comedy, a whimsical, life-affirming nod to the possibility of second chances. Postman Eric Bishop has hit a true low: his two lazy stepsons ignore him, his second marriage is in ruins, a car accident lands him in the hospital—and that’s just the start of his troubles. The lovelorn Eric meanwhile pines for former wife Lily but lacks the confidence to reconnect. While his friends contrive to help him out, often to hilarious effect, the person who finally comes through is another Eric: Manchester United soccer icon Eric Cantona (playing himself), who appears rather unexpectedly in Bishop’s bedroom, offering the sage advice on life and love that Eric needs to turn his life around.

LOURDES

DIRECTOR: Jessica Hausner - AUSTRIA

Christine, a crippled skeptic, joins a pilgrimage to Lourdes in an effort to reconnect with society. When she is apparently healed and the media gets hold of the story, Hausner's film becomes a sensitive, satirical look at faith and doubt.

Christine (Sylvie Testud), confined to a wheelchair, is isolated and socially awkward. Desperate to engage with the world around her, she joins a religious group journeying to Lourdes, the iconic Christian shrine in the Pyrenees mountains. Skeptic though she is, Christine needs companionship, and, like the others, hopes for a miraculous cure from the grotto’s healing waters. When she wakes up one morning seemingly cured by a miracle, surprising attention comes her way. “Always treading a fine line between sorrow and satire, Hausner’s cool depiction wavers between a critique of religion and a story of redemption. Christine’s pilgrimage is perplexing and wonderful in its misguided search. She will discover that the most important part of the journey is to believe in something, whether basic human kindness or divine intervention.”—Cinematheque Ontario.

MID-AUGUST LUNCH

DIRECTOR: Gianni Di Gregorio - ITALY

In this good-hearted film about the trials of caring for the elderly, a middle-aged bachelor who lives with his mother finds himself looking after the mothers and aunts of two acquaintances over a long weekend.

“One of Italy’s leading scriptwriters, 59-year-old Gianni Di Gregorio (screenwriter of Gomorrah), stars in his utterly charming directorial debut as the money-troubled Giovanni, who spends his days caring for his elderly mother in Rome. Giovanni discovers that some of his back rent will be forgotten if he also takes in his landlord’s elderly mother for a few days during the traditional mid-August holiday. But when the landlord arrives, he has both his mother and his aunt in tow. Then Giovanni’s friend Luigi shows up with a similar caretaking request for his own aged mother. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Best First Film prize, Mid-August Lunch has a wonderfully loose, almost improvised feel in which Di Gregorio focuses on following the natural rhythms of his houseguests’ interactions with each other rather than on a set storyline.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center.

THE MISFORTUNATES

DIRECTOR: Felix van Groeningen - BELGIUM

The Misfortunates examines the unconventional adolescence of thirteen year old Gunther and his dysfunctional family. A bawdy film full of pathos and humor that ponders what it takes to raise a child.

Thirteen-year-old Gunther represents the youngest generation of a line of proud, hard-drinking Strobbe men. Told in flashback from Gunther’s perspective as an unsuccessful writer in his early thirties, van Groeningen’s black comedy ruminates over Gunther’s ribald, chaotic adolescence under the “guidance” of three bawdy uncles, an ever-boozing dad, one put-upon grandmother, and unbounded collective dysfunction. Adapted from an acclaimed novel by Dimitri Verhulst and directed with deftness and verve by van Groeningen, The Misfortunates combines equal amounts of heart, soul, and pathos as it ponders whether, in the absence of other virtues, love is enough to raise a child. “Blackout drinking, compulsive gambling, non-stop whoring, and chronic fighting. Not exactly solid citizen types.”—Hollywood Reporter.

Filmography: Steve + Sky (04), With Friends Like These (07).

This year’s Belgian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

MOOMIN AND MIDSUMMER MADNESS

DIRECTOR: Maria Lindberg - FINLAND

When a volcanic eruption forces the Moomin family to take refuge in an old theater, Moominpappa decides to write a play for the family to perform.

Based on Tove Jansson’s well-loved “Moomin” books, this visually striking animated film will delight young children and big kids alike. A tranquil summer day is interrupted by a volcanic eruption, causing a flood in the Moominvalley. The water rises higher and higher in Moominhouse, forcing the family to take refuge in a strange house that floats by. The unusual lifeboat turns out to be a theatre. Moominpappa begins to write a play for the others to perform.

MOTHER

DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho - SOUTH KOREA

Mother is the story of an over protective mothers’ undying love and devotion for her mentally handicapped son.

“Convinced that her son has been wrongly accused of murder, a widow throws herself body and soul into proving his innocence. After his madcap allegorical monster movie The Host, Bong Joon-ho returns with an even more startling genre film. Mother begins as a cartoonish, almost slapstick comedy about a village idiot and his insanely doting, long-widowed parent. Midway through, the movie takes a serious turn as the 27-year-old child is railroaded into prison for the murder of a local school girl; then, in its last third, Mother unexpectedly spirals into a chilling psychological drama, as its unstoppable, devoted maternal protector appoints herself the case’s chief investigator and mutates into a cosmic force of nature, giving perhaps the performance of the year.”—New York Film Festival.

MUSIC ON HOLD

DIRECTOR: Hernán A. Goldfrid - ARGENTINA

In this sensational comedy, a film composer with writer's block and a pregnant executive enter into an unusual bargain to keep a secret from the exec's conservative mother.

Ezequiel, a nearly broke film music composer, has 20 days to deliver a score. He’s just not hearing it. One day he calls his bank, and listening to muzak while on hold for Paula, an executive he’s never met, he hears a song that inspires a breakthrough. How to find that song again, among the hundreds of inane on-hold muzak tunes? Paula, meanwhile, has not told her very conservative mother that, though she is pregnant, she is no longer with her boyfriend. When mother and composer both wind up in her office, she impulsively introduces Ezequiel as the father. They each have something the other needs, and though they are not even acquaintances, Ezequiel and Paula soon enter into a strange partnership. A witty romantic comedy that has been a sensation in Argentina, Hernán Goldfrid’s breezy film features a stellar cast, including Norma Aleandro, Diego Peretti, and Natalia Oreiro.

MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX

DIRECTOR: Sarah Watt - AUSTRALIA

A suburban family is forced to put their life in perspective and figure out what's worth fighting for in this sensitive, hilarious comedy from the director of Look Both Ways (PIFF 30).

Sarah Watt’s follow-up to her imaginative first film, Look Both Ways (PIFF 30), examines both the comedy and drama of suburban family life in Melbourne, and will resonate with anyone who has endured life’s daily little challenges only to get sideswiped by a massive one. Sacha Horler stars as Natalie, an average housewife dealing with everyday realities and family chaos: never-ending mortgage payments, raucous kids, family celebrations, and an absent-minded husband (Matt Day). Suddenly, fate throws an unexpected curve ball, and Natalie and her family must pull together as one in ways they could never have anticipated. Natalie’s year-long trial ensures that she has little choice but to laugh and cry, often at the same time, as the riches and meaning of a life worth fighting for come into focus.

NOBODY TO WATCH OVER ME

DIRECTOR: Ryoichi Kimizuka - JAPAN

A shocking crime brings together a frightened girl and a battle-hardened cop in this drama from writer and director Ryoichi Kimizuka.

When two children are found murdered, an 18-year-old high school student becomes the prime suspect and the case quickly becomes a media sensation. As both the press and an angry public descend on the home of the accused, the family finds itself at the mercy of strangers. A veteran police detective is assigned to look after Saori, the 15-year-old sister of the accused. While he initially regards the assignment as frivolous, it isn’t long before he sees what kind of toll the attention has taken on the family. When the detective feels Saori is no longer safe in Tokyo, he takes her to the country to escape, but they soon discover that no place is safe from the prying eyes of the tabloid press and the people who read it.

NORA’S WILL

DIRECTOR: Mariana Chenillo - MEXICO

Before dying, Nora devises a plan to make José, her ex-husband, take care of her funeral during the height of Passover celebration. But despite her meticulousness, she misses something—a mysterious photograph left under the bed which leads to unexpected outcomes.

A divorcée plots to reunite family and friends on the eve of Passover in this affecting, understated comedy set in Mexico City’s close-knit Jewish community. José learns that Nora, the woman he was married to for 30 years and then divorced, has committed suicide. Forced to wait five days for the funeral to allow his son to be present and the rabbi to officiate, José in the meantime discovers that Nora had prepared all of the plans and food for a final Passover Seder. But Nora also left something else: a curious photograph that may unlock the mystery of her life and death for the family she left behind. As curmudgeonly José reluctantly prepares for the funeral, a colorful collection of characters assemble in Nora’s apartment, including disapproving rabbis, a devoted housekeeper, a half-blind aunt, and the couple’s grown son. Winner of Audience Awards at festivals in Morelia, Miami, and Moscow, Chenillo’s warm and witty tale speaks to audiences everywhere.

PASSENGER SIDE

DIRECTOR: Matthew Bissonnette - CANADA

In this quirky road movie about two bickering brothers traveling to Los Angeles, various encounters with local flora, fauna, and inevitable oddballs contribute to the tender, hilarious panorama of these men and their lives.

The setting of this quirky, comic road movie is the greater county of Los Angeles, from the city to the surrounding desert. Along for the ride are two estranged siblings: overbearing older brother Michael (Adam Scott), a failed novelist, and Tobey (Joel Bissonnette), an actor, whom Michael has reluctantly agreed to ferry to various destinations and errands. But it’s Michael’s birthday and this isn’t exactly how he’d planned to celebrate. As events unfold, it becomes clear that the agenda of the trip isn’t what it seemed and issues of trust resurface just when the brothers are forging a new bond. Various mysterious encounters with off-the-radar oddballs prove, in the film’s final moments, to be tightly woven threads in the real, underlying story.

POLICE, ADJECTIVE

DIRECTOR: Corneliu Porumboiu - ROMANIA

Police, Adjective follows a morally conflicted, undercover cop as he stakes out a young boy accused of selling drugs.

Winner of the Jury Prize (Un Certain Regard) and Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the latest film from Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, PIFF 31) starts out with an absurdly comic police sting operation—one designed to catch a lone high school student in the act of selling drugs. Cristi, the cop assigned to the case, realizes the futility of the mission, but his attempts to convince his bureaucratic superiors are met with contempt, derision, and the reminder that it is not his place to question the letter of the law. But letters and laws are very much on Porumboiu’s mind, as the observational style of the film’s first part gives way to an exhilarating verbal joust between cop and police chief about conscience, personal morality, and the true meaning of the things one sees and how one chooses to describe them. “The truth of my character lies in the small things, in his daily routine and in a certain time of being and reacting.”—Corneliu Porumboiu.

Filmography: 12:08 East of Bucharest (06).

Sponsored by Romanian American Society Portland Iasi Sister City Association.

A PROPHET

DIRECTOR: Jacques Audiard - FRANCE

Sentenced to prison at age 19, A Prophet is the story of a seemingly shy and weak boy who slowly rises in the ranks of the prison’s reigning Corsican gang, all the while secretly devising his own plans.

Frenchman Malik El Djebena, part Arab, part Corsican, is condemned to six years in prison. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old and cannot read or write. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang currently ruling the prison, he is given a number of “missions” to carry out, which toughen him up and gain the gang leader’s confidence in the process. Malik is a fast learner and rises up the prison ranks, all the while secretly devising his own plans. “Audiard’s rich thriller is elegantly structured, arresting in its detailing of a little-known subculture, filled with fascinating characters, and gripping from beginning to end.”—Film Comment.

PROTECTOR

DIRECTOR: Marek Najbrt - CZECH REPUBLIC

Set in Nazi-occupied Prague, Protector focuses on the fraying marriage of a radio personality and his Jewish wife. The film asks many questions about love and morality, most importantly, "Who would you betray to save the one you love?"

Set in Nazi-occupied Prague in the late 1930s, Protector is a stylish drama focusing on the marriage of radio journalist Emil (Marek Daniel) and his Jewish wife Hana (Jana Plodková), a famous film star forced to give up her career. While she must lay low, Emil seizes a chance for his own advancement and becomes the official mouthpiece of the Reich. While his position offers a measure of protection to Hana in an increasingly dangerous anti-semitic environment, there is a price to be paid. Their fraying relationship reaches a crisis point after the famed assassination of SS Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, for which Emil becomes a suspect. In Protector, writer/director Najbrt observes a couple suddenly divided along wartime lines to pose the question, “Who would you betray to save the one you love?”

Filmography: Champions (84), Invention of Beauty (94).

This year’s Czech submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

REYKJAVIK-ROTTERDAM

DIRECTOR: Óskar Jónasson - ICELAND

Financial concerns tempt an ex-con to return to his smuggling ways in this taut psychological thriller.

Ex-con Kristófer, recently released from a jail term for smuggling alcohol while working on a freighter, now works as a lowly-paid security guard. Bored with his dreary existence and struggling to support his family, he is tempted when his friend Steingrímur offers to help him get back his old job on the ship—which would provide the opportunity to do one last smuggling job on a freighter between Reykjavik and Rotterdam. Contending not only with the suspicious local police, but also with a captain who mistrusts him and a psychopathic Dutch criminal, Kristófer sets out on his mission to solve his financial woes. Reykjavik-Rotterdam’s gritty naturalism is evocatively realized by the work of Jar City cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson and hardened performances from a fine cast.

Filmography: SLC-25 (90), Remote Control (92), Pearls and Swine (97).

This year’s Icelandic submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

ROOM AND A HALF

DIRECTOR: Andrey Khrzhanovsky - RUSSIA

Room and a Half portrays the life of Nobel prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky, who was forced into American exile in 1972.

Exiled to the United States in 1972, the famous Russian poet Joseph Brodsky always wanted to return anonymously to St. Petersburg, the city of his youth. Through a variety of imaginative techniques, 69-year-old animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky has made the Nobel Prize winner’s wish come true in Room and a Half. A fictional Brodsky narrates this nostalgic fantasy on board a cruise ship destined for Russia. Through a series of flashbacks he recalls his childhood, in particular the return of his father, laden with gifts, from World War II, and his parents’ affectionate reunion. It appears an idyllic time for the budding scribe who “live[s] in a city whose color [is] fossilized vodka.” Through the seamless fusion of documentary footage, classical Russian music, still photography, recordings of Brodsky reading his work, and beautiful, dreamlike animation, Khrzhanovsky has created a film as poetic as his subject matter.

SHAMELESS

DIRECTOR: Jan Hrebejk - CZECH REPUBLIC

Oskar is a devoted family man who, on a whim, decides to cheat on his wife. Thus begins a downward spiral of comedic tragedy that finds him out of a job and in a series of loveless, problematic affairs.

Oskar (Jirí Machácek) is a devoted father, beloved husband, and popular television weatherman. He seems to have it all, but decides that he has fallen out of love with wife Zuzana—mainly because her nose is too big. Oskar cheats on her with the family’s dim Hungarian nanny, his first step on a downward spiral that finds him out of a job and in a series of loveless, problematic affairs. Whatever mid-life quest Oskar is on is not yielding any satisfaction. In the meantime, Zuzana has no problem finding a new partner in divorced single father Matej, aided in no small part by Oskar’s parents. Matej likes her nose just fine. Full of fine details and subtle wit, Hrebejk’s “unromantic” ensemble comedy film skirts tragedy for farce as it explores the mysteries of the male psyche and the tensions between change and stability in a society that manifests both at the same time.

A SHINE OF RAINBOWS

DIRECTOR: Vic Sarin - CANADA

A lonely orphan's life is transformed by an extraordinary woman who teaches him to conquer grief and discover the magic in nature and himself.

Set on the beautiful Irish coast, Sarin’s warm, emotional film tells a story of acceptance, kindness, and the healing power of love. Eight-year-old Tomas’ gentleness makes his life difficult. His helpful nature is interpreted as weakness and the other boys at the orphanage bully him. Then one day, a kind woman named Maire sweeps in and infuses his once-cheerless existence with love, laughter, and the belief in magic. After Maire whisks him away to her home on enchanted Corrie Island off the West Coast, Tomas grows and comes into his own—but Maire’s reserved husband can’t hide his lack of interest in the child. Just when Tomas begins to come out of his shell and see the goodness in the world and the people around him, Maire’s delicate health takes a turn for the worse. Will her husband, who has not accepted Tomas as his son, be able to step up to the responsibility of caring for Tomas as Maire has done?

THE SICILIAN GIRL

DIRECTOR: Marco Amenta - ITALY

The true story of 17-year-old Sicilian Rita Atria who confessed all she knew about the inner workings of the Palermo Mafia after her father and brother were murdered.

Recounting a major turning point in Sicily’s war against organized crime, The Sicilian Girl is an eloquent, gripping crime drama, inspired by the true story of a young girl who broke ranks to testify against the Mafia. On a November morning in 1991, 17-year-old Rita Atria (Veronica D’Agostino) approached the chief prosecutor of Palermo (Gerard Jugnot), intent on vindicating her father and brother’s mafia-related deaths, and ready to tell all. It was the first time that a daughter of a mafia family openly rebelled against the traditionally male-dominated organization. Repudiated and threatened by her boyfriend, her hometown, and even her mother (Lucia Sardo), Rita is forced to leave Sicily and move to Rome—but she knows that her betrayal must be avenged.

SMALL CRIME

DIRECTOR: Christos Georgiou - CYPRUS/GREECE

Leonidas is a small-town cop who yearns to solve important crimes in the big city. However, with the mysterious death of the town drunk, Leonidas' subsequent investigation reveals that there is more to this sleepy beach community than he first imagined.

Leonidas, a young, ambitious police officer, is assigned to a remote Greek island in the Aegean. He dreams of solving important, big-city crimes, but there are few to be found in the sleepy community where he is reduced to menial chores. Each day at the town café, Leonidas and the locals watch the beautiful Angeliki, the small island’s most famous daughter, as she hosts a popular talk show on national TV. These dull rituals are shattered when the island experiences what appears to be an actual crime: the island drunk, Zacharias, is found dead at the base of a cliff. Jumping at the chance to do some sleuthing, Leonidas soon finds clues that tie the victim to Angeliki, who returns to the island and joins the investigation. As romance blooms between Leonidas and Angeliki, they learn that everyone on the island has their own Zacharias, and their stories play out hilariously in Leonidas’ imagination.

TERRIBLY HAPPY

DIRECTOR: Henrik Ruben Genz - DENMARK

A Danish village with many secrets is the setting for this blackly comic thriller. When Robert, a Copenhagen policeman, tries to help the beautiful Ingelise escape her abusive husband, the stage is set for a glorious flaunting of conventions and a melding of noir, comedy, and thriller.

A southern Danish village hides as many secrets as the nearby bog in this blackly comic thriller about the universal nature of compromise and corruption. When tightly wound cop Robert is transferred to a small border town where outsiders either adapt or disappear, he finds that the clannish locals scorn by-the-book law enforcement and rely instead on their own unique brand of frontier justice. When another outsider, the alluring Ingelise, tries to enlist Robert’s help in escaping from her abusive husband, the stage seems to be set for a predictable love triangle. Cleverly defying expectations as it knowingly toys with genre conventions, Terribly Happy sustains a unique tone that smoothly incorporates Western, noir, horror, and psychological thriller with creative flair.

Filmography: Someone Like Hodder (03).

Winner of six Danish Bodil (Danish Oscars) and this year’s Danish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

DIRECTOR: Jesper W. Nielsen - NORWAY

Through a Glass, Darkly is the moving story of a Norwegian teen suffering from a terminal illness who comes to terms with her life and imminent death via conversations with an otherworldly presence.

Adapted from Jostein Gaarder’s acclaimed novel, Through a Glass, Darkly is the sensitive, moving story of how an otherworldly presence helps a young girl come to terms with her serious illness. Cecilie, home from the hospital, wants everyone to act normally, but it isn’t so easy for her family. It isn’t easy for Cecilie either, but she has found a way to cope—by thinking back to a family holiday in Spain where she fell in love with Sebastian. One night an odd man enters Cecilie’s room, claiming to be an angel named Ariel. At first Cecilie doesn’t believe him, but when he does things that no human can do, she accepts his claim and asks him to reveal the secrets of heaven. Ariel agrees, but only if she first tells him what it is like to live on Earth.

A TOWN CALLED PANIC

DIRECTOR: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar - BELGIUM

This surreal, stop-motion adaptation of a popular European television show has Cowboy, Indian, and Horse traveling through space and time on a quest to free their wrongly imprisoned neighbor. A gleefully surreal treat for animation fans of all ages.

This thoroughly delightful, surreal stop-motion animated fantasy tells of an eccentric provincial village and its beguiling inhabitants. The impetuous Cowboy and Indian, eager to buy a birthday gift for their more mature roommate, Horse, accidentally set off a chain of events that destroys their residence and places their innocent neighbor behind bars. Setting out to right their wrongs, Cowboy and Indian are joined by Horse and taken on a journey to the center of the earth, across a frozen tundra, and into a bizarre underwater parallel universe. Rendered in a completely charming style, this feature film version of a popular European television program will thrill animation lovers of all ages.

VINCERE

DIRECTOR: Marco Bellocchio - ITALY

The early life and rise of Benito Mussolini is shown here through the eyes of his first wife, Ida, all but erased from history. Juxtaposing Ida's tragic decline into insanity with Mussolini's phantasmagoric rise to power, Bellocchio fashions a unique glimpse of a little-known aspect of history.

Bellocchio delves into the hidden early life and rise to power of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, as seen through the eyes of his quietly erased first wife. Beginning as a theater actor, journalist, and socialist on the rise, Mussolini meets Australian aristocrat and socialist Ida Dalser in 1914—and she falls hard for him. Their torrid affair compels her to sell everything to help him fund “Il Popolo d’Italia,” the newspaper that would soon become the propaganda tool of the newly formed Fascist party. After Ida gives birth to their son, Mussolini rejects them both. He eventually has them arrested, marries another woman, and dispassionately watches as Ida slips into insanity. Juxtaposing Ida’s tragic story with the phantasmic public one of the grand Il Duce, Bellocchio fashions a unique glimpse into an extraordinary period in Italian history.

Selected Filmography: Fists in the Pocket (65), Leap Into the Void (80), The Butterfly’s Dream (94), The Nanny (98), The Wedding Director (07).

WARD NO. 6

DIRECTOR: Aleksandr Gornovsky, Karen Shakhnazarov - RUSSIA

Ward No. 6 is the modern update of Chekhov’s tale of a psych-ward doctor turned patient in his own asylum.

A major box office and critical hit in Russia, and this year’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Ward No. 6 is a bold, modern update of Chekhov’s tale of a psych-ward doctor turned patient in his own asylum. Filming in an actual mental hospital, the directors interview real patients with actors only incidentally wandering in and out of the frame. Used by Chekhov as a metaphor for a man’s disappointment with the promises of science, the story now reconsiders that disappointment as a loss of faith in the nation’s future.

THE WEDDING SONG

DIRECTOR: Karin Albou - TUNISIA

Set in Tunis during the Nazi occupation, The Wedding Song is the story of the powerful friendship between Nour, a Muslim, and Myriam, a Jew.

Karin Albou returns to the themes of her first film, La Petite Jerusalem (PIFF 30), in The Wedding Song, mapping the intersection of Jewish and Arab cultures and exploring female sexuality. Unfolding against the backdrop of the German occupation of Tunis in 1942, this sensual and sexually frank story centers around two teen friends, Jewish Myriam and Muslim Nour, who have long desired the other’s life. Although far more interested in love than war, both girls find historical circumstances affecting their wedding plans. The occupying Nazis demand “reparation payments” from the Tunisian Jews, which Myriam’s impoverished mother cannot pay. Out of options, she promises Myriam’s hand to wealthy, older doctor Raoul. Meanwhile, Nour is happily betrothed to her handsome cousin Khaled, but her father postpones the wedding until Khaled gets a job. Unfortunately, Khaled finds work with the Germans, helping to round up Tunisian Jews.

WELCOME

DIRECTOR: Philippe Lioret - FRANCE

Welcome tells the story of a young Kurd, Bilal, who aims to swim to England from Calais, and the swimming instructor who agrees to train him for the treacherous crossing.

Managing to be political without being heavy-handed, Welcome focuses on illegal immigrants trying to reach England from Calais, and the risk taken by the French people who help them. Bilal, a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee, left his native Iraq shortly after his girlfriend emigrated to England, and wants to join her. His trek across Europe comes to an abrupt end on the northern coast of France. How to get across the cold English Channel? He decides to head for the local swimming pool to begin training for the swim of his life. There he meets lifeguard Simon, to whom he eventually confides his grand plan. Simon takes Bilal under his wing and secretly teaches him how to do the crawl, despite ongoing threats from the police, who imprison those who aid a growing community nurturing an inextinguishable hope of making a new life in the West.

Selected Filmography: Lost In Transit (93), Don’t Make Trouble (01), The Light (04).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

WILD GRASS

DIRECTOR: Alain Resnais - FRANCE

“Resnais delivers a career-crowning masterpiece with this delightful roundelay, based on Christian Gailly’s novel ‘The Incident,’ about the fate-altering ripples triggered by a seemingly ordinary purse snatching. The purse belongs to Marguerite (Sabine Azéma), a dentist who moonlights as an aviatrix. Its contents are retrieved by Georges (André Dussollier), a married man who soon finds himself infatuated with the purse’s owner, even though he hasn’t actually met her yet. Add in a couple of keystone cops, some dizzying aerial acrobatics, and the glorious camerawork of cinematographer Eric Gautier and you have the recipe for a uniquely playful meditation on coincidence and desire that suggests Resnais, at age 87, is truly in his prime.”—New York Film Festival.

THE WILD HUNT

DIRECTOR: Alexandre Franchi - CANADA

Love, identity, and role-playing games all come together in this meshing of myth and reality. A man enters a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game to find his girlfriend, who has left him for the game. His refusal to role-play angers the dedicated players and sets fantasy and reality on a collision course, capturing the potentially dangerous intersection of actual and made-up worlds.

In a dark forest, a battle is brewing between the power-hungry Celts, the rampaging Vikings, the secretive wood elves, and a mysterious shaman who is about to unleash his latest fiendish scheme. Clever, funny, and intense, The Wild Hunt is set in the fantasy-reality of a large role-playing game, and the plot mirrors the legend behind the game. Erik goes looking for his girlfriend, Evelyn, who has left him for the game. He will need the help of his brother Bjorn, who happens to be the Viking leader and owner of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. Erik’s entry into the game angers the dedicated players when he refuses to role-play, setting fantasy and reality on a collision course. Capturing the potentially dangerous intersection of actual and made-up worlds, Franchi’s film is a timely, potent comment on the modern yearning for ritual and the consuming nature of adopting another identity.

First Feature Film.

Best Canadian First Feature Film, Toronto International Film Festival.

THE WIND JOURNEYS

DIRECTOR: Ciro Guerra - COLOMBIA

Ignacio Carrillo, a retired musician, journeys to return his supposedly cursed accordion to his old teacher. Along the way, he picks up a teenage boy who dreams of becoming a wandering musician like Ignacio. This touching odd-couple story mixes the evocative landscapes of Colombia with the magic of its music to tell a timeless tale.

Ignacio Carrillo, old and retired, has spent his life traveling through the villages of Northern Colombia playing traditional songs on his accordion, a legendary instrument that was said to be cursed because it had supposedly been won in a musical duel with the devil himself. When his wife suddenly dies, he bitterly vows to never play again and decides to make one last journey—to return the accordion to the man who gave it to him, his teacher and mentor. Setting out on his donkey, he is set upon by a young teenager with romantic dreams of becoming a nomadic minstrel like Ignacio. Reluctant to take him along, Ignacio relents, but in the course of their journey tries to convince him that the life of a minstrel can only lead to solitude and sadness. This touching odd-couple story mixes the evocative landscapes of Colombia with the magic of its music to tell a timeless tale.

Filmography: The Wandering Shadows (02).

This year’s Colombian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

THE WINDOW

DIRECTOR: Buddhadeb Dasgupta - INDIA

A simple act of generosity sends a young man on a picaresque journey through a frightening netherworld of crime and weirdness in this evocative tale.

Bimal and Meera are a young Kolkata couple, very much in love and on the verge of getting married. But Bimal has an idealistic streak that jeopardizes their bliss. On a visit to his old school, he sees how it has fallen into disrepair and decides to donate a new, handcrafted window to replace the now decrepit one from which he gazed as a boy. It seems like a simple act of generosity, but in Dasgupta’s Bengal, generosity can seed chaos. Soon, he is lost in a picaresque netherworld of petty crime and mystical visions. “Window showcases Dasgupta’s striking imagery and sense of place, but still more impressive is his delightful, seamless mesh of the magical with the realistic, the slapstick with the ethereal, and romance with global economics.”—Telluride Film Festival.

Selected Filmography: Distance (78), Crossroads (81), The Return (86), Their Story (92), The Shelter of the Wings (93), A Tale of a Naughty Girl (02), Chased by Dreams (04), Memories in the Mist (05), The Voyeurs (07).

WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO

DIRECTOR: Javier Rebollo - SPAIN

Woman Without Piano is a quietly comic look at a Madrid housewife's attempt to escape from her mundane and tedious existence.

Plain, middle-aged Rosa is a married woman with no friends and no social life. She has devoted her life to her family and doesn’t seem to think much of herself. But when night falls, she enters a fun, dark, and absurd new world. With her husband Francisco tucked in bed, Rosa (Spanish TV superstar Carmen Machi, recently seen in Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces) sneaks out to meet a young Polish construction worker at the bus station, instigating a provocative tour of nocturnal Madrid: neon-lit hotels, all-night bars, and dingy launderettes. Rebollo creates a fascinating, disquieting work in which “anything might happen, and the film—winner of the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Best Director award—holds the viewer in thrall by a chain of extraordinarily staged sequences fueled by a visual command and wit that honors the cinema of Jacques Tati, Otar Iosseliani, and Fellini.”—AFI Fest.

YANG YANG

DIRECTOR: Cheng Yu-Chieh - TAIWAN

This coming-of-age story follows a young Eurasian woman in Taipei as she transitions from high-school athlete to aspiring actress.

“Cheng Yu-Chieh has made a vibrantly alive coming-of-age story, combining contemporary energy with a French New Wave vibe. Young Eurasian high schooler Yang Yang is played by Taiwan’s most popular young indie movie muse Sandrine Pinna, whose half-Taiwanese, half-French looks are integrated into the film’s heart. Yang Yang’s best friend, her half sister Xiao-ru, is a rival both on the track and in their love lives. When Xiao-ru’s boyfriend falls for Yang Yang, jealousies explode in an act of shocking betrayal, changing Yang Yang’s life forever. A friendly manager Ming-ren takes her under his wing and her career as a model/actress takes off, thanks to her mixed ancestry and his tender care and training. Visually and thematically, Yang Yang precisely articulates, via sex, scandal, and heartbreak, that shaky, unstable, exhilarating moment between adolescence and adulthood.”—Vancouver Film Festival.